Many Americans, if they have any memory of the U.S. Navy in the Vietnam War, may recall the dire situation of a river patrol-boat crew in the 1979 movie Apocalypse Now, of naval aviators forced to break the rules to accomplish their mission in the 1991 film Flight of the Intruder, and of sailors pushing helicopters off their ships in news accounts of the traumatic 1975 evacuation of Saigon. In short, these images depict a Navy in distress.1
The long conflict in Southeast Asia unquestionably took a heavy toll in lives and national treasure: 2,551 sailors perished and another 10,000 suffered wounds during a decade of heavy combat. Executing air operations over North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia claimed the lives of 600 Navy air crewmen.2 The North Vietnamese captured 170 Navy and Marine aviators, some of whom did not survive their brutal experience in Hanoi. Even by 2013, the remains of 362 sailors had not been found and returned to the United States. Naval operations and enemy action caused the loss of 854 Navy aircraft.3 Hundreds of U.S.-supplied ships and craft fell into enemy hands with the defeat of the armed forces of the Republic of Vietnam. Like the other services, during and after the war the Navy suffered from racial turmoil, an epidemic of drug abuse, budgetary cutbacks, antimilitary sentiment, and other ills.
Despite these significant losses and serious social problems, the Navy learned from the Vietnam experience, successfully adapting its operations and tactics and developing a host of improved ships, aircraft, weapon systems, and equipment for the challenges of late 20th-century operations. By the end of the war, the service had become especially skilled at projecting naval power ashore with its carrier, naval- gunfire, and amphibious forces; mounting maritime patrols; and working both with other services and America’s allies.
Maritime Patrol and Mine Defense
The failure of strategic decision-making in Washington allowed Hanoi to keep its forces in the South supplied via the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville, but the Navy largely prevented the enemy from using the coast of South Vietnam for that purpose. In Operation Market Time, which lasted from 1965 to 1972, the U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, and Vietnam Navy (VNN) deployed warships, Swift boats, junks, and patrol aircraft along the 1,200-mile coastline to interdict North Vietnamese trawlers and smaller vessels delivering guns, ammunition, and other war materials to Viet Cong units ashore. Command and communications centers and coastal radar sites strategically placed in nine patrol sectors along the coast tied it all together. A number of low-capacity junks got through the maritime patrol, but most of the 50 enemy 100-ton trawlers that tried to deliver their cargoes during Market Time were sunk by allied forces, scuttled by their crews, or forced to abort their missions. In one noteworthy operation, in April 1972 the nuclear-powered attack submarine Sculpin (SSN-590) trailed a trawler from its point of departure in the Gulf of Tonkin to the Mekong Delta coast, where a South Vietnamese warship sank the infiltrator.4
The Navy’s late 20th-century readiness for port and harbor security owed much to the Vietnam experience. Early in the conflict, Viet Cong swimmer/sappers mined the aircraft ferry Card (T-AKV-40) in the port of Saigon. In Operation Stable Door, the Navy and Coast Guard deployed port and harbor security forces in all of South Vietnam’s major ports. Thereafter, Boston Whalers, 45-foot picket boats, and combat divers severely hindered the enemy’s ability to attack ships in port. In conjunction with Coast Guard and VNN river forces, 57-foot minesweeping boats, specially configured landing craft, and even remotely piloted boats fought hard to prevent the enemy’s interdiction of South Vietnam’s waterways. The mine warriors won the battle for control of South Vietnam’s major waterways, and the enemy never permanently severed these critical lines of communication.
From Unconventional Ops to Firepower
Vietnam witnessed the birth and coming of age of the Navy’s SEAL (sea, air, and land) commandos. The highly trained naval warriors carried out diverse operations including the collection of critical tactical intelligence, the capture or killing of key enemy leaders, and the rescue of allied prisoners deep in enemy territory. Deployed by helicopter, assault boat, inflatable Zodiac boat, or other means, SEALs routinely demonstrated exceptional bravery in battle and they invariably accomplished their dangerous and difficult missions. The Vietnam experience earned the SEALs a permanent role in modern naval warfare.
The amphibious ready group/special landing force (ARG/SLF) concept, developed in the late 1950s, gained widespread Navy and Marine Corps acceptance because of its demonstrated effectiveness in Southeast Asia. Naval leaders routinely employed an ARG/SLF, composed of four or five amphibious ships, landing craft, a Marine infantry battalion, and a Marine helicopter squadron, as a quick reaction force in political crises, for the emergency evacuation of diplomats and refugees, and for combat. ARG/SLFs deployed just south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) often provided fresh reinforcements to Marine units locked in combat with the North Vietnamese Army in 1967 and 1968 and operated against the enemy’s seaward flank during the Easter Offensive of 1972.
The naval forces off Vietnam could point to many other accomplishments. The Fleet’s surface warships complemented the carrier force. The battleship New Jersey (BB-62), cruisers, and U.S. and Australian destroyers became especially adept at putting accurate, timely, and coordinated firepower onto enemy targets ashore. In Operation Sea Dragon these warships severely restricted daytime logistic road traffic in southern North Vietnam. U.S. warships also took a heavy toll on North Vietnamese tank and infantry units trying to attack south during the Easter Offensive. On 8 May 1972, 7th Fleet warships confidently approached within a few miles of North Vietnam to bombard targets all around Haiphong.
Fires on board the carriers Oriskany (CVA-34), Forrestal (CVA-59), and Enterprise (CVAN-65) cost the lives of 205 men and destroyed many aircraft. If not for the bravery and professional skill of sailors in damage-control parties the ships might have been lost. The fires prompted the Navy to reassess its shipboard procedures and redouble damage-control training. For years afterward, film of the Forrestal fire served as an instructional tool. No similar conflagrations have occurred in the Navy since the end of the Vietnam War, a testament to the seriousness with which naval leaders and sailors addressed the problem.
Early Carrier Operations
The Rolling Thunder bombing campaign from 1965 to 1968 failed to compel the North Vietnamese to end their direction of the war in South Vietnam or to cut the flow of supplies on the Ho Chi Minh Trail—the program’s primary objectives. Abysmal management of the operation by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration doomed the effort. The naval air crews and shipboard sailors of the 7th Fleet’s Task Force 77 fought with professional skill and bravery during Rolling Thunder, and the carrier forces brought heavy firepower to bear against the enemy.
The Navy, however, discovered a number of deficiencies in its tactics, aircraft, weapons, and equipment. Low-level bombing attacks by multiplane “Alpha Strikes” produced heavy losses of men and machines; World War II– and Korean War–era “iron bombs” lacked precision; older A-4 Skyhawks and propeller-driven A-1 Skyraiders proved vulnerable in the lethal skies of North Vietnam; and the Fleet’s fighter arm registered an unacceptable 2-to-1 win-loss ratio. Even before the end of Rolling Thunder on 31 October 1968, the naval service had begun to address these and other problems.
Lessons in Logistics
With little fanfare but great importance to naval operations in the Gulf of Tonkin and the South China Sea, the Navy’s logistic-support force kept the 100-ship 7th Fleet well supplied throughout the conflict. Ammunition, stores, repair, and salvage ships and oilers limited the need for combatants to leave the line and steam for days to reach Subic Bay in the Philippines or, even farther, the support bases in Japan.
The support force became especially adept at underway replenishment in which fleet auxiliaries transferred supplies and fuel to warships via lines and hoses strung between them and pioneered the use of helicopters in the vertical replenishment of combatants. The Navy introduced to the logistic force the fast combat-support ship Sacramento (AOE-1) and combat-stores ship Mars (AFS-1), both of which could match the speed of the large, fast carriers as they transferred material to them by line, hose, and helicopter.
The time in Vietnam well prepared the Navy for one of its major responsibilities of the late Cold War and post–Cold War era: logistic support of U.S. military expeditions far from the United States. The Navy established the 7,000-mile supply line across the Pacific, transported several infantry divisions to the combat zone, and logistically sustained the U.S. presence in Southeast Asia for more than eight years.
The 500 merchant vessels of the Navy’s Military Sea Transportation Service (later the Military Sealift Command) shipped almost all the fuel and ammunition and 95 percent of the vehicles, construction materials, and supplies provided to the combat theater. The wartime experience helped make logistic operations more efficient with new roll-on/roll-off (RO/RO) ships that could swiftly load and unload armored vehicles, trucks, and construction equipment via stern and side ports. Ships hauling containerized cargo ultimately consigned the old U.S. “breakbulk” freighters to the scrap yards.
Practice for the Soviets
Other experiences in the Vietnam War helped prepare the Fleet for potential combat with the Soviet navy. On 23 May 1968, the guided-missile cruiser Long Beach (CGN?9) destroyed a MiG 65 nautical miles away with a Talos surface-to-air missile. The war saw the employment in combat of another surface-to-air missile, the Terrier. On separate occasions, the guided-missile frigates Biddle (DLG-34) and Sterrett (DLG-31) shot down three enemy MiGs with Terriers.5
Throughout the conflict, the Navy deployed warships between the enemy coast and the fleet operating at Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin. The positive-identification radar advisory zone or Red Crown ships (so-called for their radio call sign) were crewed by highly trained personnel and equipped with the most advanced radars and communications equipment. The radars on these vessels could identify both friendly and hostile aircraft over North Vietnam. On numerous occasions, the Red Crown ships helped Navy and Air Force fighters destroy enemy planes far ashore. In August 1972, for example, Senior Chief Radarman Larry Nowell of the guided-missile cruiser Chicago (CG-11) assisted in the destruction of 12 enemy planes far inland, for which he received the Distinguished Service Medal.
One of the Navy’s worries during the early Cold War was how to cope with Soviet Osa and Komar fast-attack craft that they might face in a future war. The Vietnam experience largely put those concerns to rest. Carrier aircraft and warship gunfire heavily damaged and temporarily put out of action the three Soviet-made P-4 torpedo boats that attacked the destroyer Maddox (DD-731) on 2 August 1964. Carrier planes sank another three P-4s that had tried to sink two U.S. destroyers steaming 55 miles east of Haiphong in July 1966. In August 1972, a squadron of Soviet-built P-6s came out to attack the heavy cruiser Newport News (CA-148) and three other U.S. warships engaged in a nighttime shore-bombardment mission near Haiphong. Rockeye cluster bombs dropped by Task Force 77 planes and gunfire from the warships destroyed all three of the attackers.
The Linebacker Success
In the three years after the end of Rolling Thunder, the Navy made a determined effort to correct the shortfalls it discovered in its earlier air operations. With the resumption of full-scale air combat in the spring of 1972, the Navy showed just how much it had learned about bringing decisive naval power to bear on a land-based enemy. Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and one-time chief of Naval Operations; Admiral John S. McCain Jr., commander-in-chief, Pacific; and other leaders finally persuaded the White House to allow them greater latitude in the selection of targets ashore and the employment of tactics, aircraft, and munitions that they believed would be the most effective. President Richard Nixon also agreed to an action that naval leaders had repeatedly called for: the closure of North Vietnam’s ports. On the morning of 8 May 1972, aircraft from Task Force 77 mined Haiphong, and in later weeks the other ports through which passed 85 percent of North Vietnam’s imported war materials. No merchant ships steamed into or out of Haiphong before the signing of the Paris Peace Accords on 27 January 1973.
Aircraft from six carriers launched continuous strikes on the enemy’s supply lines in the southern panhandle of North Vietnam during the Linebacker bombing campaign. The Task Force 77 commander put to best use the planes and munitions that the Navy had developed during the conflict, including advanced A-6 Intruder and A-7 Corsair attack planes using laser-guided bombs, electro-optical glide bombs, and other precision-guided munitions. Navy and Air Force squadrons knocked down bridges that the services had failed for years to put out of action with less accurate conventional bombs. New, improved Shrike air-to-surface missiles and electronic targeting equipment laid waste many North Vietnamese SA-2 surface-to-air missiles and their guidance systems.
By Linebacker, the Navy had replaced less capable aircraft with planes better able to fight and survive in the lethal air-defense environment of North Vietnam. EA-6B and other electronic-countermeasures aircraft equipped with sophisticated jammers helped minimize the loss of naval aircraft. Also coming on board during Linebacker were upgraded heat-seeking Sidewinder and so-called dogfight radar-guided Sparrow air-to-air missiles.
The campaign also witnessed the first combat test of the Navy’s Top Gun school. Dissatisfied with the results of air-to-air combat in Rolling Thunder, the Navy directed Captain Frank Ault to find a solution to the problem. A study he completed revealed that the prewar training of F-4 Phantom crews to fight enemy interceptors at long ranges with radar-guided missiles had dramatically reduced the Americans’ ability to win close-quarters dogfights. As a result of this report, the Fighter Weapons School was established at Miramar Naval Air Station in California. Between 1968 and 1972, the Top Gun school trained hundreds of pilots who polished their dogfighting skills. Linebacker operations confirmed the wisdom of the Navy’s decision to establish Top Gun; carrier fighters registered a 12-to-1 ratio of victories to losses. The naval air crew of Lieutenant Randy Cunningham and Lieutenant (junior grade) William Driscoll, graduates of Top Gun, claimed their fifth aerial victory in Linebacker to become the war’s only Navy aces.
‘That Which Does Not Kill Us Makes Us Stronger’
The U.S. Navy successfully exploited the Vietnam War experience, despite the hardship, disenchantment, and blood that accompanied it, to carry out its responsibilities in the crises of the late 20th century. In addition to preparing for a conflict with the Soviet Union, the Navy put into practice much of what had been learned in Southeast Asia. The strategies, tactics, ships, weapons, aircraft, and equipment tested and adopted in Vietnam prepared the service for the challenges of littoral conflict in the postwar era.
Carrier forces well schooled after Vietnam in air-to-air, strike, and reconnaissance operations made short work of Moammar Gadhafi’s Libyan air and missile defenses in the 1980s. In the Persian Gulf War, naval aircraft readily eliminated Saddam Hussein’s fleet of fast-attack boats. Planes operating from six carriers employed precision-guided munitions and other smart bombs to neutralize air defenses, bridges, and airfields in Iraq and to assist in the liberation of Kuwait. Carrier squadrons, without the loss of a single pilot or plane, helped compel Slobodan Milosevic to end his country’s assault on the people of Kosovo in 1999.
Like their sister the New Jersey and scores of cruisers and destroyers off Vietnam, the battleships Missouri (BB-63) and Wisconsin (BB-64) brought devastating fire down on Iraqi ground forces in Kuwait in 1991. It was no coincidence that the U.S. warship in the Adriatic responsible for monitoring the skies over the Balkans in the 1990s retained the Vietnam-era call sign Red Crown. The embargo patrols mounted by multinational forces against Iraq and Serbia during this time owed much of their success to the earlier Operation Market Time. Navy-Marine ARG/SLFs figured prominently in the liberation of Grenada, Panama, and Kuwait, as did SEALs well versed in the tactics and weapons employed by their predecessors in Vietnam. The port-security and harbor-defense measures taken in the Persian Gulf during Desert Shield and Desert Storm bore a marked resemblance to the standard operating procedures of Operation Stable Door. With the Vietnam-era transpacific supply effort as a guide, the Military Sealift Command once again employed a reactivated Ready Reserve Force, containerized cargo, and RO/RO ships to deploy major U.S. combat forces from the United States and from Europe to the Persian Gulf. Underway-replenishment and vertical-replenishment operations, by then routine, allowed U.S. naval forces to remain forward-deployed throughout the world.
Navy veterans of the Vietnam War benefited greatly from their experience in the decades that followed. Thousands of these sailors rose to high enlisted or officer rank, and some commanded major U.S. forces. Admiral Henry H. Mauz Jr., who had served as a junior officer on the waterways of Vietnam, led a carrier task force in the 1986 strike on Libya. He oversaw establishment of the maritime embargo of Iraq during Operation Desert Shield. Admiral Stanley A. Arthur, who flew more than 500 combat missions over North Vietnam in his A-4 Skyhawk, for which he earned the Distinguished Service Cross and numerous other awards, succeeded Mauz and led U.S. naval forces to victory in the Persian Gulf War. Admiral Leighton W. “Snuffy” Smith, another Vietnam air warrior, commanded all NATO forces in the successful 1995 conflict against Serb forces in the Balkans.
As the old adage goes, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” In many ways the Vietnam War took a heavy toll of the U.S. Navy and its sailors, but the hard school of combat forged a service admirably prepared to master the challenges of late 20th-century conflict.
1. Unless otherwise specified, the sources relied upon for this article are as follow: Edward J. Marolda, By Sea, Air, and Land: An Illustrated History of the U.S. Navy and the War in Southeast Asia (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1994); John Darrell Sherwood, Afterburner: Naval Aviators and the Vietnam War (New York: New York University Press, 2004); Norman Polmar and Edward J. Marolda, Naval Air War: The Rolling Thunder Campaign (Washington, DC: Naval History & Heritage Command, forthcoming); Edward J. Marolda and Robert J. Schneller Jr., Shield and Sword: The United States Navy and the Persian Gulf War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001); Gary E. Weir, You Cannot Surge Trust: Combined Naval Operations of the Royal Australian Navy, Canadian Navy, Royal Navy, and United States Navy, 1991–2003 (Washington, DC: Naval History & Heritage Command, 2013.
2. Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vietnam Statistics,WHS/DIOR/SIAD, 2 April 1997.
3. Department of Defense Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Office, 2014.
4. Charles R. Larson, “The Sculpin’s Lost Mission: A Nuclear Submarine in the Vietnam War,” Naval History, (February 2008) vol. 22, no. 1, 28–35; Letters to the Editor, Naval History, (August 2008) vol. 22, no. 1, 6.
5. Malcolm Muir Jr., Black Shoes and Blue Water: Surface Warfare in the United States Navy, 1945–1975 (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1996), 158, 205.